Sophie Brzeska

Sophie Suzanne Brzeska or Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska (born Zofia Brzeska; 8 June 1872 – 17 March 1925) was a Polish writer and artistic muse most noted for being the companion of the artist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

Brzeska and Gaudier met in 1910 in Paris and began an intense relationship. Henri annexed her surname although they never married. Much of what scholars and historians have been able to trace about Sophie Brzeska has come from her personal correspondence with Gaudier. H. S. Ede acquired her papers after her death and drew extensively on her writing when he published A Life of Gaudier-Brzeska (1930).

Early years Sophie Brzeska was born in Łączki Brzeskie, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) in 1872 to a large family of noble descent on her mother's side. Her childhood was difficult and she did not receive a sufficient education. The book Matka and Other Writings (London: Mercury Graphics; includes some texts translated from French by Gillian Raffles) was from manuscript sheets which had lain unpublished for over 50 years. One part of this group of papers is a version of Matka, and it includes her first meeting and her life with Henri Gaudier, The papers he used for this account are now in the archives of Cambridge University Library, the University of Essex, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans. In 2008 Sophie's unexpurgated writings were published.

Later years and death Brzeska moved to Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire in 1916. Her mental state deteriorated and in 1922 she was committed to the County Mental Hospital where she was registered as Sophia Susanna Gaudier Brzeska.

She died intestate in the County Mental Hospital, Barnwood, Gloucestershire on 17 March 1925.

In other media The relationship between Henri Gaudier and Sophie Brzeska was fictionalised in the 1934 stage play The Laughing Woman by Josephine Tey under the pen name 'Gordon Daviot'.

She was often left out of accounts of Gaudier's life. Savage Messiah, Ken Russell's 1972 film based on Ede's book, focuses on Sophie and Henri Gaudier's relationship giving them equal importance in shaping each other's lives. In the film she was played by Dorothy Tutin.